Thanksgiving Part II

This post should more accurately be called “Never-Before-Seen Thanksgiving” because, well, it’s never been seen before.

Those of you who know me well know that I’m a little OCD (some of you would probably strike out “a little”). I was so excited to host Thanksgiving and to see how the table-scape would come together that I decided to set the table a day early. I just wanted to make sure that everything came together like I had it pictured in my head.

Since I knew we were eating around 3pm the next day, once I had the table set I knew it was my only chance to see the glow of the candles at night. I decided to set the candles ablaze and snap some pictures, and boy did it look wonderfully romantic. I might just have to bust out these candles for our next anniversary dinner.

The soft curves of the chandelier play so nicely with the warm glow of the candles.

Here’s a close up of the three different types of candles I used. The clear trumpet-shape tealight holders were great for simplicity, and the stunning mercury glass tealight holders fancied everything up a tad. The tall votive holders are three different sizes so they do a great job varying the height of the light. (I love when I accidentally rhyme.)  They also have this nifty clear base you can fill with anything your little heart desires. I like them empty for negative space, but for Thanksgiving’s sake I filled them with brightly colored leaves.

All of these candles are now sitting pretty on the mantel. They look quite splendid at nighttime paired with a roaring fire. My mom calls it my “Candle Menagerie” which makes me smile.

What did we learn here today? When in doubt just dim the lights and set two dozen candles afire. Instant ambiance.

Remember this?

I wasn’t lying. The faucet and last remaining curtain have been long overdue for the ole heave-ho. Replacing these two definitely shaved a few years off the look of the kitchen:

Let me back up for a second. Replacing the faucet is something we’ve been wanting to do since closing day. Here’s a little diagram to explain why:

So, with this project in mind and our housewarming gift card in hand, (thanks to Steve’s parents!) we practically ran to Lowes to check out their faucet selection. Our “must have” was finding a faucet that was 4-hole compatible and one that had a single handle to eliminate adjusting two different knobs for hot and cold.

We also had a 10% off card so we stocked up on a bunch of needed items, including new blinds for the kitchen window. With a full cart and we-didn’t-pay-full-price grins, we headed home for the install.

I almost feel sorry for the old faucet in that picture. It looks like a faucet carcass. All it needs is a chalk outline. Sorry, buddy. You just didn’t cut it for us.

See the holes in the sink? The picture below was taken through one of those. (I think Steve looks kind of adorable in his goggles. Safety first!)

And then through the magic of blogging ::POOF:: the faucet and window blinds were ready for action! Hellooooooooo gorgeous!

I love so much about this faucet. The goose-neck shape opens up the sink and makes it so much more functional. I also love the included soap dispenser which means I was able to get rid of the pump that sat on the counter. 10 points for de-cluttering!

(You can click on this bad boy to see it bigger.)

Another small change we made that really improved it in here was hacking down that bush in front of the kitchen window. See in the before picture how you can’t even see through the window because of the leaves?

Here you can see how much trimming the branches improved the view and the light.

I walk into my kitchen every day now and breathe a sigh of relief. It feels so much better in this room now. Once we put in new counters and get paint on the wall it’s really going to start to look like home! (I guess that means I actually have to pick out paint colors.) Until then I will be working on some sort of window treatment. I’m thinking of DIYing something similar to this with some yellow chevron fabric I scored on sale at Hancock Fabrics.

I’ll keep you posted. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

There is so much to be thankful for.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to list out all of the nouns I am thankful for (I can hear a collective sigh of relief). To make a long story short, I’ll just say I’m thankful for all the people in my life that I love, and that love me. Having my parents here this weekend conjured up unparalleled Warm and Fuzzies.

The day started with a bottle of champagne upon my parents arrival. Exxxcelent. Then Da Weemon (that’s how my dad, and his accent, say “the women”) started cooking in the kitchen. It was not unlike an episode of My Drunk Kitchen. Oh, I keed, I keed. We weren’t really that drunk, but we were definitely enjoying ourselves in there. Seriously one of the best Thanksgivings ever. Being able to host my parents for the first time was such a proud feeling, and it felt wonderful that after all these years they could relax for once.

I was going for a simple elegance for the table setting. You can’t go wrong with a bonfire of candles and a mix of whites and golds. Remember the gold chargers I talked about getting from Goodwill? I think they look lovely and not-at-all thrifted. Those mercury glass tea-light holders might just be my favorite candles ever. (.99 each at Target!)

The center of the centerpiece is a vase I already had, filled with cinnamon Red Hots (for a dash of color) and sticks I trimmed off of a tree in our yard. I was going to paint the branches white, but thought they just looked too autumnal and pretty in their natural state.

The leaves that I used for a splash of color on the white napkins are from our Bradford Pears that line the streets in our neighborhood. The color is just breathtaking; It might give you a sense of how gorgeous our streets are right now.

Time to load-up our plates! The new kitchen worked perfectly for a buffet-style celebration. I like to keep it simple. We just served straight from the pots and pans! It’s just family, right?

Even Olive made it into the picture. She looks sad about not getting any scrumptious leftovers. (I’m pretending to not know that my mom slyly filled her bowl with turkey and gravy.)

After our delicious feast, the boys made a quick getaway. This is where I found Steve:

I asked Olive if she wanted to help with the dishes. Her response was a lick on the face and a violent tail wag. To which I will conclude is her saying “If only I had opposable thumbs.”

The only thing that would’ve made this holiday more perfect is if we could’ve spent it with Steve’s family, too. We’ve spent the last two Thanksgivings with them and it made us a little sad we had to miss out this year. Between all of the texts and funny pictures we can safely assume they had as awesome of a time as we did. We’re so excited to see everyone for Christmas! Oh the joys of holiday time-shares. Someone needs to invent a way for us to teleport, immediately.

I hope everyone’s Thanksgiving weekend was filled with love and laughter, and that you remembered all you have to be thankful for.

xoxo

My Furniture-Building Hero

Because I am incredibly proud of my husband and his furniture-making abilities, I thought I’d post his step-by-step picture tutorial of how he built our coffee table. Well, it may not be exactly step-by-step as I am not 100% sure of every step of the process. But you’ll get a pretty good idea from the pictures he took. Working in his parent’s basement and having access to his dad’s wide selection of tools, he was able to build this beauty of a table.

These are pieces he started with:

Check out that table saw. We have GOT to get one of those for our house. After trimming down all of the raw pieces, this is what he was left with:

Now that all the pieces are laid out it’s time to put them all together.

Above image: For this particular piece of furniture he wanted to experiment with only using wood and screws, and no metal brackets. Which means, you could drop this table off of a two story building and I’m fairly certain it would still be a coffee table after it landed.

Time for stain!

And voilá! Instant coffee table. Except, it wasn’t instant in real life. That’s the beauty of a blog post; everything looks quick and easy. Steve did a lot of preliminary work, like drawing it up in a 3D program, which helped with figuring out all of the measurements. In reality, this beauty took a couple of weeks to make.

And it was worth it!

Steve really built this table to suit his needs at his last apartment, and eventually we’ve talked about replacing it with an ottoman. (See that couch corner? We want to try and find an ottoman that will be the same height as the couch so we can push it in that corner like a puzzle piece and snuggle up to watch movies.) So, even if this guy finds a new home in the loft, we’re definitely going to keep it forever. It’s fun to think that our future kids might take it to college and play Quarters on it use it to hold all their heavy text books while they study.

I’ll be back in a few days to share pictures of our new faucet that we (and by “we” I mean Steve) installed last night.

I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble.

Thrift Store Mania

Since my parents are coming for Thanksgiving (STILL REALLY EXCITED) I needed to get some sort of lighting situation figured out in the guest bedroom.

My plan was to spend my moolah on new lamps for the master bedroom and then bequeath those lamps to the guest room. We had some pretty generous gift cards from the wedding, so I headed over to Target to scope things out but, sadly, came home empty handed. I just couldn’t justify spending $40 on ONE lamp–without the lampshade. That would’ve been a total of around $100ish dollars for two lamps plus lamp shades. No spank you.

I decided to meander to Goodwill on my lunch break a few days ago to see if I could find any treasures. I totally hit the jackpot.

I found these awesome brass lamps that are super-solid and tall and will be able to stand up to the hugeness of the new bed (once we order it). I got the lampshades on sale at Target for $13 a pop, so my total for two new groovy lamps came in at an impressive 42 beans. (Just so you don’t have to do the math — I paid a total of $16 for the pair — you’re welcome.) I’m still undecided if I’ll leave these naked in all their brassy glory (I love the brushed metal look of them), or if I’ll give them a coat of glossy spray paint. I’ll probably wait until we get the bed and paint the walls to make my final decision. In the meantime, I’m feeling pretty darn proud of my savings.

Another guest-room item I had been looking for–and didn’t want to spend a lot of money on–was a wall clock. It’s just one of those little touches that makes your guests feel at home. I snagged this guy for only $1.99.

I have big plans for him. I want to give his frame a colorful coat of paint, and give him a little face-lift with a new background. (I still need to figure out how to take off the hands.)

Although the lamps were my biggest deal of the day, this beautiful little glass jar was probably my favorite find.

At $2.99, this clear and functional glass container really made my day; I’m easy to please, what can I say? This little beauty also lives in the Guest Suite (That’s what I like to call our guest room / guest bathroom combo. It makes me feel fancy). I filled it with useful bathroom items that guests might need and likely didn’t pack: Q-tips, individual floss / tooth-pick combos, and face-wiping pads.

I also came home with some pretty gorgeous gold chargers (if you don’t know what chargers are, they’re fancy, decorative plates that go under regular plates). But you’ll have to wait until I snap pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner table to see those. I’m already dreaming about stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

Happy Thursday Tuesday, party people. I hope you get a few extra days off this week!

The During

I can’t actually call this post “The After” because, well, nothing is done yet. We’ve been here for two weeks but haven’t yet had a free weekend to start any projects. So, use a little bit of that imagination I know you have and check out our “In Progress” pictures:

We have ripped down all but one of the existing curtains (above the sink) and replaced them all with these deliciously creamy panels. Once the walls are painted these curtains are going to frame the windows beautifully.

I love how this rug adds such a lovely splash of color to the room. Big Lebowski was correct: it really does tie the room together.

I have no idea if that blue chair is going to stay there. Or that leaning mirror for that matter. Just keepin’ it real, people. The only thing that is staying with 100% certainty is that brown mutt sitting right there. (And, I guess, our gorgeous new couches that I’m slightly to moderately obsessed with.)

This is my favorite nook in the whole house:(A shout out to all my Chicago buddies! Hi!)

And here’s an aerial view from the loft:

This is Olive’s favorite look-out:

I love having this storm door. It lets so much light in. I’m interested to see how long I can keep it open with it getting colder and colder. Maybe another month? A girl can dream.

Third bedroom. One word: YIKES

Above is our very not-finished guest bedroom. Notice the TV tray tables as nightstands. I had to whip this room into some sort of livable condition because my parents are coming to stay with us in a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving in our first home (I. AM. SO. EXCITED. OMG) I didn’t take any pictures of the bathroom because it looks basically the same. I tried to hang a picture to distract from the wallpaper. It didn’t work.

And here’s our master bedroom. Steve actually took down those patio door curtains (what the hell?) last night and hung up our beautiful West Elm curtains from our apartment. It made a huge difference. I think this room and the adjoining bathroom are going to be the first to undergo a makeover.

I can’t wait to get started on all of our projects. I’m lucky to be married to a man who wholeheartedly loves working on the house as much as I do. I feel like the hard part is over, and now the fun can begin!

Headboard It Up

Until I can get around to posting post-move house pictures (say that 3x fast), I thought I’d share a tutorial of a headboard I made for our old master bedroom.

Once we bite the bullet and buy our dream bed from Crate & Barrel I’ll probably end up moving this bad boy over to the guest bedroom. Before I show you the how-to, let’s all ooooh and aaaaah over The Bed. The Atwood, to be more specific.

We toyed with the idea of DIYing a bed, using this one as inspiration, but didn’t think we could find the quality of wood we wanted for the price of the bed. It’s not 100% decided yet but we’re thinking this will be our Christmakah present to each other. More on that later.

On to the tutorial:

First of all, I suggest asking a very handsome man to make you a wooden frame. Make it as wide as your bed, and however tall you’d like for it to be. Once you have your frame it’s time to get a-staplin’. I bought medium weight quilt batting, and cut it a few inches larger than the frame.

I recommend stapling at twelve, three, six, and nine o’clock to make sure you don’t get everything on there all wonky. (You do not, however, need to curl up into a little human ball like I do.)

Once you have those initial staples in place, and everything looks straight, go to town with that staple gun. I’m not sure why marriage isn’t legal between woman and staple gun. That’s how much I love mine.

Once your batting is secured to the frame, repeat this whole process (MORE STAPLES!) with the decorative fabric you’re using. I used an old comforter from Anthropologie that Olive rendered unusable due to claw marks. I luckily found a small section without tears that was a perfect size for this project.

And Voila! It really is that easy.

Our bedroom looks nothing like this anymore. So I suppose I’ll just have to take some pictures and finally get them up here.

Happy headboarding, and happy Thursday!

Welcome to the family, Chandalier

Ever since The Great Chandelier Search I knew one of our immediate projects was going to be hanging up our my pride and joy: Charlotte the Chandelier. Mostly because I’m hard-core in love with her, but also because the original one hurt my eyes and needed to be relieved of its kitchen-lighting duties.

After purchasing our first ladder Steve climbed up and ripped the old guy down. You know something is ugly when you can’t even sell it on Craigslist for $20. Seriously… not even one inquiry on it.

After a lot of measuring (Steve) and eye-balling (me), we hung a hook to center Charlotte, Steve got her wired, and then we had light!

Isn’t she divine?

The dinette looks a lot different than it did on move-in day, but there is still so much that I want to do. Curtains are still in the works; (the gray ones on the sliding door are just there for privacy) new ones are arriving Thursday from The Curtain Stork. We also need to paint and get some of our artwork on the walls. The paint-chip art is just hanging out until we decide where everything is going to go.

Next up on the agenda is taking room-by-room pictures so you can see how the house looks now, with all of our belongings somewhat in place. Until then I will be basking in Charlotte’s light, and deciding which project to tackle next.